Just the Way You Are by Sanjeev Ranjan Read Free Book Online Page B

It was the same office. I looked for the name and designation of whom I was supposed to report to. It was the exact same.
    I came out. On my way downstairs, I passed a lady and thought of asking her. She was a bit aged and her body language was that of a top-class management honcho. I asked her. ‘Excuse me, Ma’am. Could you please tell me where I can meet Ms Vatsala?’
    ‘Are you a new associate?’ she asked. The question rekindled a new hope within me.
    ‘Yes. I was told to report for work today.’
    ‘Okay.’ She gestured to me to follow her and led me to the same room where just a moment back I had found the biggest code cracker of the world. What a nutcase!
    He looked around everywhere as if seeking an answer out of air and then slowly opened his mouth, ‘Actually, she hasn’t come in to office yet.’
    Without waiting for me to say anything, she asked the guy, ‘Rajesh, do you know when Vatsala will be coming in?’The guy, who was pretending a few minutes back to be busy as hell, replied without the lapse of a second, ‘Um, I haven’t seen her, actually. Just check whether her bag is there at her desk.’
    ‘No. Her belongings are not here.’
    ‘That means she hasn’t as yet come in.’
    She looked at me and said, ‘Um, what’s your name?’
    ‘Sameer.’
    ‘Sameer, Vatsala is not yet in. You can wait for her in the waiting lounge. Give me your contact number and she will call you if she comes otherwise you just come here and check in an hour’s time.’
    ‘Okay.’ I gave her my number and plonked myself down in the waiting room.
    It was already full with guys and girls. All seemed to be new joinees. The company hired more and more employees every year. More than it could pay at times. That’s precisely the reason why engineers are underpaid. And with such companies coming to college campuses for placements, I was sure the number of employees would definitely surpass the population of Jaunpur or Hisar, for that matter. All of them were quiet. Pin-drop silence. Everyone looked as if they were pissing in their pants. Just one odd man sat in the middle of the sofa in front of me and seemed to occupy the entire length of it. He spoke in a voice loud enough to put many Indian politicians to shame. I looked around to scan the faces and bodies. The girls, except for a couple, were certainly beautiful. One of the guys was muttering under his breath, ‘Why is it that we always land up in the kind of batch where either the senior or the junior girls are beautiful and we are left with the ugly ones?’’ I pretended not to have heard this and suppressed a smile. After some time, the couple of so-called ugly girls also seemed beautiful to me. This was the fate of depravity! The boy was by now was busy discussing with another sitting near him how the company tricked ugly girls into a single batch so that they could hand them similar job titles and profiles and the beautiful girls were secured for the best positions. It was all about marketing and getting the best benefits.
    I heard his friend reply disdainfully, ‘What can be done? It’s all written in fate.’
    I was almost agape at such a remark and whispered to myself, ‘What the hell! Aren’t they beautiful? Am I blind or was it the south India effect?
    The impact of my four-year stay in south India during my engineering was so profound that I fancied that every girl in this world was beautiful. You could find the spunk in every other girl you met but not in a south Indian. Who knows, one day I might start dating a Nigerian girl. The third girl sitting at the end of the sofa was a bombshell. Her lips were so thick and juicy. What did they want—Mallika Sherawat?
    I ignored them and waited patiently for the call.
    Someone came down the stairs and shouted, ‘Whoever is here to meet Ms Vatsala can leave and come tomorrow.’ A few heads flew up in shock along with mine.
    ‘Why?’ all of us shouted together.
    ‘She is on leave.’
    ‘That means